Science class in Louisiana, ctd.

by Greg Mayer

In my previous post I noted that Zack Kopplin, at the time a Louisiana high school student and now a Rice University undergrad, has led efforts to repeal Louisiana’s creationist Science Education Act of 2008. Zack saw the post, and contacted Jerry, asking us here at WEIT to highlight some of the more recent and egregious actions of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Zack has a post at his site with more details, but here are some of the lowlights. (By the way, Zack’s Facebook page is a more frequently updated account of developements on this front, and WEIT readers should follow there for the latest.) According to Zack,

My review of the Governor’s voucher program identifies at least 20 schools who use a creationist curriculum or blatantly promote creationism on their websites. These 20 schools have been awarded 1,365 voucher slots and can receive as much as $11,602,500 in taxpayer money annually.

Among the most egregious is Northeast Baptist School, in West Monroe, which uses BJU Press science textbooks, one of which was highlighted in my previous post. Zack notes that the University of California won a lawsuit in 2010 that successfully defended its right to not accept high school credits from courses based on creationist textbooks. Faith Academy, in Gonzalez, has a student handbook that states that students must “defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible verses traditional scientific theory.” (Their spelling is as bad as their science!) And taking the cake is Claiborne Christian School, also in West Monroe, where students are “taught to discern and refute lies commonly found in textbooks, college classrooms, and in the media”, and whose newsletter has approvingly cited the claim that scientists are “sinful men”. Each of these schools are eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of state support.

Gov. Jindal has recently gotten some good publicity for demanding that the Republicans “stop being the Stupid Party.” But as Newsweek’s John Avlon quickly noted, Jindal himself has presided over Louisiana’s plunge into creationism:

Marco Rubio said Earth’s age is a great mystery. Fellow rising star Bobby Jindal’s state teaches creationism alongside science. Both Republicans are preaching reform, but if they and others keep pivoting away from common-sense science, the GOP will remain the Stupid Party—and fail.

Jindal is promoting the “Stupid”, not preventing it.

Good luck to any student raised on this bilge trying to succeed in the 21st century. As the desperate Louisiana high school student pleaded to his science teacher, as the teacher explained creationism in the now classic Doonesbury comic, “Please stop. I’d like to get into a good college.”

30 Comments

My current home state of Indiana has a very robust school voucher program (one of the nation’s largest, with about $38 million diverted from public to private schools).

Nearly all of the 289 private schools that accept voucher money (and the students whose parents use the vouchers) are religious schools.

On November 21, the Indiana Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case challenging the program’s constitutionality on Establishment-Clause grounds. A trial court judge had upheld the law, and the Supreme Court decided to accept a direct appeal (these are rare) rather than wait for the case to go first to an intermediate appellate court.

I don’t know how many of these private schools teach or promote creationist garbage, but we Hoosiers do have a problem (although probably smaller than Louisiana’s problem): A creationist education bill was introduced in last year’s legislative session by a fundagelical from northeastern Indiana and attracted numerous co-sponsors before it was allowed to die in committee. Now we have Republican super-majorities in both houses of our General Assembly.

Wow – super majorities in both houses is rather scary. Many Hoosier legislators are not particularly enlightened re science and its relationship to law. They are also, unfortunately, willing to listen to very vocal fundamentalist constituencies that accept the myth of the US being a Christian Nation in which their particular brand of Christianity ought to be interwoven with government. Many of us thought that a blue Indiana in 2008 did not indicate a fundamental shift, and 2012 seems to be more characteristic of the populace. One bit of good news is that Richard “God’s Will” Mourdock didn’t win.

Rubio is a huge embarrassment to the state of Florida.His recent interview with GQ magazine was appallingly stupid. You can find his blather on the Florida Citizens for Science blog http://www.flascience.org/wp/?p=1759

There is a very good chance that either Jindal or Rubio will be the Republican candidate for President in 2016. They’re both young and brown-skinned…but, as we see, they’re both raving loonies.

Just as we saw a spectacular collapse of the Republican field this year with their choice of supporting the reproductive rights of rapists over those of their victims, I’m going to tentatively suggest that we’ll see a similar collapse in 2016 on the Creationism issue.

The Cuban exile community in South Florida is (to put it mildly) staunchly anti-communist (and may be one of the few anywhere to actually observe the embargo on island cigars, though not so much when it comes to sending financial assistance back to family members stuck in Cuba). Indeed, Rubio first ran into credibility trouble when he got caught trimming his family history to align more closely with the archetypical anti-Castro mythos of El Exilio.

There you go again, confounding my faith-based portrait of Rubio with those librul facts of yours. Don’t you understand that it’s perception that creates conservative realities, and that the perception is that Rubio wears Mariachi hats to Salsa parties where he eats lots of bean burritos and drinks tequila and his skin is darker than Ricardo Montalbán’s?

Ergo, he’s going to carry over 80% of the Hispanic vote in 2016 and ride their sweet wet backs all the way to the Lily White House. Because that’s all that them brown-skinned people care about, after all — putting somebody they think is as Spanish as they are in power. Stuff like fair immigration laws and strong protections for low-wage workers and a healthy social safety net and universal health care and ending the war on (some) drugs and all the rest — that doesn’t matter.

None of that matters. Just skin color, and, as far as the Republicans are concerned that the lettuce-pickers are concerned, Rubio fits that bill perfectly because his skin is brown.

And we know that that’s a winning strategy because rMoney would have won if it weren’t for all that voter fraud stuff, right?

Seems you’ve struck the perfect blend of cynicism, sarcasm, and Tea-Parody thinking. That should set you back on course to realize the Rovian ideal of a permanent Republican majority. No way the reality-based community can compete with that. Whatever happens, don’t change a thing. You can’t lose … unless the other side stoops to massive voter fraud and buying off the unproductive half the electorate with promises to buy it lots and lots of “stuff.”

One of the drivers for these private religious schools funded by public tax money is…MONEY.

It can be quite profitable.

Since they don’t care if they teach the kids, they don’t hire real teachers. In a lot of cases, the teachers are considered contract employees and don’t get much in the way of benefits, no pension plan, no health insurance.

They also don’t get paid much and some will have a large number of part time teachers to get around various employment rules.

What they don’t pay the teachers can go to the administration which owns the school. PROFIT!!!

Yeah, I was hoping for a reply from Ken as well to my same day comment:

Regarding the 2008 Bill, letters and signed petitions were numerous, including a 6/12/08 Press Release issued by Barry Lynn, lawyer and Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

Direct quote: “If this new law is used to promote religion in Louisiana public schools, I can guarantee there will be legal action.”

And there have been no legal actions thus far. Instead, LDOE (Louisiana Dept. of Education}) standards within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) appear to be on the increase.

In December 2011, Louisiana was awarded a $17.4 million “Race to the Top” grant by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE). The R2T was authorized through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and was designed to encourage states to adopt aggressive reforms and place an emphasis on enriching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiatives.

I see no problems, given the Constitutional restrictions and curriculum based limitations based on prior court cases, nor do I see the emergence of a flat-earth society or a return to geocentricism. Science will be pursued as before.

17 clicks on ‘MORE’ comments to see mine and some responses.

But Jindal has pissed me off on occasion, in particular regarding his numerous disparaging remarks during the preceding presidential campaign.

I’m as liberal as they come on most issues, but see extreme ‘Creationism’ as a non-threat within science. And I see no problems with the current Louisiana bill, sans the futile efforts of a few, due to firm constitutional restrictions regarding the teaching of religious platitudes. That will never come to pass!

However, the simple addition within evolutionary theory of an adjunctive hypothesis of design [not in totality, but simply selectively and investigatively], will ameliorate the present conflict over ToE theory. And, it will NOT demean science.

In short, a more open investigative posture regarding a non-replicable theory is clearly on the table, correction: lab bench. The current AAAS position on ID simply continues to fuel the flames of a non-ending conflict between restrained science and true investigative science.

However, the simple addition within evolutionary theory of an adjunctive hypothesis of design [not in totality, but simply selectively and investigatively], will ameliorate the present conflict over ToE theory.

In other words if science and normal people cave into creationism and wild eyed xian fanatics, then there won’t be any conflict.

Why should we lie about a basic and well established theory that underlies all biology because backwards people in a backwards place can’t handle reality?

What will kill creationism is the death of US xianity, a process well under way thanks to the fundies and creationists.

>blockquote>And, it will NOT demean science.

Yeah it will.

Intelligent Design, which you are advocating is creationism, lightly disguised. It’s lost in court whenever it has managed to even get in court.

Lee Bowman is more than a bit odd. That is about as nice as I can put it after reading some of his postings, found through Google.

“It’s lost in court.”

ID, properly understood, has not lost in court.

Yeah it has. You are just making stuff up.

BTW, I did glance at the christianpost exchange. I’ve seen enough. It’s a holiday, and I’ve got things to do and am not going to bother. If anyone wants to exchange with Lee Bowman, go ahead but don’t expect much.

Jones of course focused on ID’s political ramifications, which he based solely upon skewed testimony, the school board’s actions, a book which misrepresented ID, and of course a quick course in biology 101 with no homework assignments or exams, just smiles and nods of approval from the gallery.

The honorary degrees and paid speaking engagements came later, after his 139 page double spaced dissertation hit the air waves. And where was Death Star when we needed it most?

I don’t know what the website etiquette rule is about commenting on old posts like this, but great news is too rare to pass up. Yesterday (Friday, 30 Nov.) a Baton Rouge, LA, judge ruled Jindal’s voucher program unconstitutional, specifically for diverting public funds to private and parochial schools. Finally, some much needed good news out of this state.

I’m embarrassed! Louisiana Claibornes are notorious skeptics with a long history of public service at the local and Congressional level. Plenty to be embarrassed about in current day Louisiana though- Karl stove keeps lurking around the Governors Mansion and ALEC legislation keeps turning up. Jindal is highly questioned here too, his behavior runs from the Cheney to the bizarre!
We long for Edwin Edwards- we got value for the graft! Jindal is looting the Medicaid program and has sold public medicine, LSU medicine, to The Church. He’s a thief and a scumball.